


This Never Happens in the J. Edgar Hoover Building

by kageygirl



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-21
Updated: 2006-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-19 18:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/203812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageygirl/pseuds/kageygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like everything else in the building, the elevator has a mind of its own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Never Happens in the J. Edgar Hoover Building

_one Tuesday morning_

  
"So, Abby--here's what I don't get. I know that you're, like, Supergirl." She glared at him--which, from like eighteen inches away, was pretty intimidating, with the eyeliner and all--and Tony amended his statement. "Excuse me. I know that you're, like, Wonder Woman."

"Better."

Tony waved up at the controls, darkened and mocking them where they sat together on the floor. "Can't you just--I don't know--crack open that panel and bust us out of here?"

"Tony, it's an elevator. It has many mechanical parts, which are completely inaccessible from the passenger car."

"Oh."

She gave a heavy sigh, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. "Besides, I tried that last week, and I got a very stern talking-to from the building manager."

He chuckled into her hair. "Sorry, Abs."

  
 _a Thursday afternoon_

  
"You know, I bet this keeps happening because Gibbs is always stopping the elevator for those little tête-à-têtes he has. Like with Fornell."

Abby looked up from Tony's hand, cradled in her own. She'd supposedly been tracing his love line, but Tony suspected she'd just been trying to make him jump by tickling his palm. "What do you think they do in here, anyway?"

"Compare notes on being humorless bastards?"

"Tony!" She punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"You know better than to say things like that! Gibbs will hear the, the psychic vibrations and take it out on you later!"

"But Gibbs _likes_ being a humorless bastard."

"Well, yeah, but you shouldn't _call_ him on it."

One of the studs on her ring had really nailed him, and he rubbed at the spot with his free hand. "So how does you taking it out on me now help anything?"

Abby nodded primly at him. "I'm teaching you the error of your ways and saving you from worse later."

"If you say so."

She went back to trailing her nails over his palm. "I wonder if they make out."

"Who?"

"Gibbs and Fornell."

Tony jerked his hand away from her as he did a full-body cringe. "Abby!"

"What?"

"Why would you say something like that? What about the vibrations?"

"Oh, I'm immune. Gibbs like me."

Tony pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Now you've made me hope an aneurysm destroys the part of my brain that conjured up that image."

  
 _one of those Mondays, around lunch_

  
"Charades?"

Her boots were propped way up on the wall, crossed at the ankles, hands folded over her stomach, head on the floor next to Tony's thigh. She looked at him upside-down as he said, "Ooh, bad idea. With only two people, we'd just end up wanting to strangle each other."

"Good call."

He kept teasing the end of her pigtail with one finger, feeling the strands slide beneath the tip of his nail. "Got any playing cards?"

"No. Oh!" She started to reach for her pocket, then stopped. "No, I left my tarot cards on the shelf next to Bert."

"Bert going into the fortune-telling business?"

"He likes to look at the pictures."

Tony twirled her pigtail gently around his finger, then let it slip free. "Want to trade deep dark secrets?"

"Ooh." She raised an eyebrow--or, maybe, lowered it, from his point of view--and said, "What exactly did you have in mind?"

He raised both eyebrows back and gave her his best innocent look. "Sexual anecdotes?"

Her lips curved in a way that was dangerous from any angle. "I like the way your mind works, Agent DiNozzo."

* * *

"--and, I swear, I still don't know exactly what he did, but I have _never_ \--"

With a shamelessly ordinary _ping_ , the elevator doors finally slid open, and McGee looked across the car--and then down, to where Tony and Abby were sitting Indian-style, like kids at summer camp.

Tony grinned a shark's grin at him, though he was regretting not hearing the rest of Abby's story. "Probie! We were just talking about you." He offered Abby a hand, and they stood up together, wobbling against the wall and making Abby giggle.

"You were?"

Abby brushed herself off, then waved her hands earnestly at McGee. "It was _totally_ favorable."

"You might say..." Tony threw an arm around McGee's shoulders and leaned in, using his bedroom voice. "... They were glowing reviews."

McGee's eyes darted between them. "Why does that worry me?"

Tony gave him a hearty slap on the back and then let go, stepping past him and answering without looking back, "Because you might be _slightly_ less naive than you look, McGee."

  
 _always on a Wednesday_

  
"I do not like being trapped in an enclosed space for an extended period of time."

"And yet you hide it so well." Tony kept himself out of the way--slouched in the corner, hands tucked in his pockets--and watched Ziva prowl. Three steps across, turn, two steps back, pivot, repeat. It was kind of hypnotic. Like watching a nature show.

He hoped they got unstuck before the inevitable circle-of-life bloodbath. Abby'd be so sad she missed it--but, then again, she'd probably get to analyze what was left of Tony afterwards.

  
 _Friday evening_

  
"Wait, this is a government building--shouldn't things work a little better around here?"

McGee, being new to all this, was still standing up, playing with the dead controls and the even-more-moribund emergency phone. Tony and Abby had dropped their butts to the floor as if choreographed. "Like you said, Probie, this is a _government building_."

"So?"

Tony looked up at McGee from under his eyebrows. "So--you've seen the coffeemaker..."

McGee blinked, then nodded. "Point taken."

"Never mind that now. McGee!" Abby gestured excitedly from the floor. "You get to join our little club!"

"What club?"

"The stuck-in-the-elevator club."

McGee sat awkwardly, when it had become clear that Abby wasn't going to stop waving him down. "This is... good?"

"It's a--bonding experience with your fellow agents, McGee." Tony gave McGee a nice long stare, enough to make him squirm a little. Then he steepled his fingers together and rested the point against his chin. "So, Abs, you were telling me about that thing last time...?"

  
 _Saturday, tea time_

  
The familiar _clunk_ echoed through the car, and it lurched to a halt. Tony rubbed the back of his neck, and Abby cut herself off midsentence and whipped around to beam at their fellow passenger. "Ducky!" She looked back over at Tony. "I feel like we should have made bingo cards or something."

"Good lord." Ducky frowned at them. "Is it happening in this one, too?"

Abby's eyes widened. "This one?"

"Last Tuesday, Mr. Palmer and I were stuck in the morgue lift for two hours."

Tony counted back to Tuesday. "Is that why Palmer was twitchier than usual last week?"

  
 _Thursday, on their way out_

  
"So, does _Gibbs_ ever actually get stuck in the elevator?"

McGee had finally relaxed enough to sit down of his own volition, and his shoulder was warm against Tony's. Tony stared off into the burnished metal distance and tried to imagine that kind of inanimate temerity. "It wouldn't dare."

  
 _Sunday, when they should have been off_

  
"Why have we not yet learned to take the stairs?" Not that Tony was really complaining at the moment, because his head was resting on Abby's thigh, and she was running three fingers through his hair. But it seemed like a thing they should ask at some point, being trained students of human behavior and all.

She tapped him on the forehead and gave him a stern look. "Because taking the stairs would constitute deliberately attempting to circumvent fate. The consequences of that could be way worse than just being stuck in an elevator."

"Oh." He grinned up at her. "I was kind of hoping we were rolling the dice on eventually getting so bored that we'd end up making out with each other."

"Well, of course there's _that_. I just didn't want to bring it up, in case we jinxed it."

Across from them, at Abby's feet, McGee gave an exasperated sigh. "Could you guys _please_ not talk like that while I'm stuck in here with you?"

"Oh, don't worry, McGee. We would never leave you out." Abby giggled, and Tony got to see the effect it had on her anatomy, up close and personal.

Then he rolled himself up to his knees. Reaching out, he put a hand on McGee's shoulder, just below his neck, and kneaded with his fingers. Very, very tense. "Yeah, Probie. Woman's got some highly complimentary things to say about you. I can't help but be a little... curious."

"Cut it out, Tony," McGee said, looking both irritated and nervous.

Abby crawled across to join them, running a hand over McGee's head. "It's okay, McGee. We'll be gentle with you."

The next few seconds happened in a blur--there was a _ping_ , and a smack to the back of his head, and then Gibbs's voice filled the car. "Would you three quit screwing around and get back to work?"

"On it, Boss." Tony stood up in time to see Gibbs's back disappearing down the hall. Abby was already on her feet, and she and Tony helped McGee up, hustling out of the elevator before the doors closed.


End file.
